


Infernalis

by SidandGenoIncognito



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Attempt at Humor, Bisexual Male Character, Dating, Demisexual Sidney Crosby, Demons, Getting Together, Incubus Sidney Crosby, M/M, Non-Human Genitalia, Pansexual Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:40:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidandGenoIncognito/pseuds/SidandGenoIncognito
Summary: Summary: When Zhenya finds himself strapped for cash, he decides to donate certain bodily fluids for extra income. And who pays the best? The demons at the Infernalis Fertility Center, of course.Content warnings: discussions about infertility/difficulty conceiving, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, hints of nipple kink, very brief mentions of mpreg (no actual mpreg), explicit consent, shades of crack treated seriously, not (just) PWP, cameo by Brandon Tanev. Expanded content warnings in notes.
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71
Collections: Sid/Geno Spooky Fest 2020





	Infernalis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarcangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcangel/gifts).



> **Expanded content warnings** : Despite the premise, this story isn't PWP, though it is explicit. When I was researching incubi and succubi, I found some examples of lore where they’re the same thing, but can change form. I used that as the basis for the demons in this fic. Their concept of sex and gender is more fluid than their human counterparts. This means that Sid can manifest either a penis or a vagina in both his human and demon forms (and he also has a self-lubricating asshole and the ability to shapeshift, because well… sex demons by nature in this verse are ready for anything). He identifies as male; however, at various points in the story, he has either a vagina or a penis, and in one scene, he changes from one to the other during sexual activity. Geno can be read as either bisexual or pansexual.
> 
> Also, I played with Geno’s age a little bit for a variety of boring reasons. He’s in his mid-twenties here, even though the fic takes place circa 2017.
> 
>  **Notes** : sarcangel, this probably isn’t what you had in mind when you requested modern folklore/cryptid stuff. To be honest, it’s not what I had in mind when I set out to write something having to do with modern folklore and cryptids. This fandom has so many (wonderful) vampire, werewolf, and bear stories, and I was trying to find a different angle to take. I started thinking about demons, specifically incubi/succubi, but you requested to not include dubcon or non-con. That just meant I had to challenge myself to find a way to write a story with an incubus or succubus character that somehow didn’t end up in dubcon or non-con territory, and well… this fic was born. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Lastly, many thanks to my beta, Kelly!! I really appreciated your encouragement.

As Zhenya trudges across the parking lot, a cold wind biting at his face, he reminds himself that he’s glad he came to the United States.

It’s hard to remember on a bitter March day that feels more like the depths February, his feet dampening from slush through his tennis shoes. Harder still when he’s leaving a shift at the latest of his string of part-time, low-paying jobs. This time it’s a sporting goods store. Maybe next week it’ll be a chain restaurant, or he’ll go back to driving for one ride-sharing company or another. Maybe it’ll be all three.

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those jobs, exactly, except that on their own, none of them pay enough to make ends meet. Zhenya had always thought that living in America would be — more. Just more. More prosperous, more advantageous, more freeing. He’s more able to be himself, certainly, and he’s not slaving away in the bowels of the MMK at the very least. He certainly has aspirations of _more_ , but without higher education or a better grasp of the English language, he hasn’t yet been able to make them into reality. In some ways, all he’s really done is trade one steel city for another.

On the other hand, maybe Zhenya had expected life in the States to be less: less complicated, less challenging. Maybe he’d just expected to be warmer. He’s still not quite sure how he’d managed to land in Pittsburgh when places like Miami exist. At least he has hockey here, and he stubbornly ignores, as he sidesteps another pile of half-melted snow, that there are plenty of warm-weather cities with NHL teams.

“Geno!” someone calls out, startling Zhenya and bringing his foot down directly into the next icy puddle. All annoyance, he swivels to see Brandon — one of his coworkers, a friendly and excitable guy whose company Zhenya usually enjoys. He’s jogging across the parking lot, his jacket flapping open like he isn’t bothered by the frigid weather. Zhenya pulls his scarf up more securely under his chin as Brandon approaches, as though it might help both of them. “Hey, man,” Brandon says as he catches up. “You coming out tonight?”

Ordinarily, Zhenya would have been glad to; he likes the people he works with at the store and they’re fun to spend time with. Today, though, he’s in a bad mood, and he has a legitimate reason to bow out anyway. “Can’t,” he replies shortly. “I give plasma tomorrow.”

Brandon nods, seeming unfazed by the rejection as they arrive at Zhenya’s car. Or, more accurately, Zhenya’s bucket of rattles and rust that he calls a car. “Cool, that’s cool. You do that a lot?”

Zhenya shrugs. “Every month, maybe.” They won’t let him donate more often than that.

“Good money?”

“Depends on how much plasma,” Zhenya explains. “Like, I’m big guy, so they take lots. Thirty, forty bucks, maybe. Sometimes fifty.”

Brandon frowns thoughtfully. “Not bad.”

“Maybe not so much for you,” Zhenya needles him. “You’re just small.”

The jibe doesn’t bother Brandon, who grins. “I’d take what I can get. It’s not like I’m going to get rich working here, you know?”

Zhenya snorts his agreement as he digs his keys out of his coat pocket with stiff fingers. He hates the cold.

As he struggles to unlock the car door, Brandon sidles a little closer and drops his voice conspiratorially. “Have you ever considered donating — other things?”

When Zhenya turns to squint at him in suspicion, the wind hits the side of his face like an icy fist. Brandon isn’t even wearing a _hat_. “Like what?” he grunts. “Blood?”

Brandon laughs. “No, man. Like —” he looks like he’s trying to subtly mime jerking off, but it actually isn’t all that subtle.

“What? No,” Zhenya fires back, finally yanking the door open. He’s so close to being out of the elements, and the fact that he’s still standing out in them having this conversation just makes him grumpier.

“No judgment,” Brandon insists, holding up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I hear they pay more than you’re getting for plasma, and you can definitely donate more than once a month.” He laughs again, then gives Zhenya a significant look. “And you know who pays the best? Demons.”

Zhenya pauses beside his car. All he wants is to get inside and crank up the heat, even though it will only blow lukewarm until he’s almost home. But still, he has to ask, “Demons?”

“Well yeah,” Brandon says. “They have a whole operation. And don’t do their collections the normal way. They send out a succubus to take care of that shit. Demon. Sex.”

To be perfectly honest, Zhenya doesn’t know what a _succubus_ is, but it sounds like it has the word _suck_ in it, so he thinks he has the basic idea. It all seems a little far-fetched, in his opinion, and frankly, too reputable for demons. “You do?” he asks Brandon with heavy skepticism.

Brandon snorts. “No way, man. My mom would kill me if I fucked a demon. My buddy told me all about it, though.”

Well, _that_ definitely sounds like a true story. Zhenya harrumphs and turns away to climb into his car. “You work tomorrow?”

“Nah, not until this weekend. See you later, Geno.”

He bounces cheerfully away, and Zhenya is finally able to escape.

*

Later, though, when Zhenya is back at home, dressed in dry clothes, and tucked up under a blanket with a hot cup of tea by his side and his cat purring in his lap, he finds himself opening a private browser window and doing a few clandestine Google searches.

Or at least it starts with a few.

At first, he pretends to only be curious about the concept of donating sperm _in general_. Brandon’s right about one thing: he’s certainly capable of jacking off more often than he’s allowed to donate plasma. Even if he’s paid less each time he blows his load, it could still be worth more in the end. That, in fact, is exactly what Zhenya learns — the amount he might get paid for each donation is comparable to plasma, if not more, and if he’s accepted into a donorship program, he can do it two or three times a _week_. There’s a place right in Pittsburgh. He could get there by bus and give his poor car a rest.

Of course, there’s something else that Brandon had said that’s stuck in Zhenya’s head. Before he can stop himself or think too much about it, Zhenya adds a word to his Google search. _Demon. Sperm donate demon_. Thank god for private browser windows.

It brings back thousands of results. To Zhenya’s surprise, the first one is a shockingly legitimate-looking website for something called the Infernalis Fertility Center. It only takes looking at a few pages for Zhenya to confirm that this is exactly what Brandon was referring to: it’s a real service, run by demons, who collect sperm and use it to impregnate people who are having a hard time conceiving. The website claims that their success rate is better than any scientific method. And when Zhenya learns how much they pay their donors, his eyeballs nearly pop from their sockets: it’s _definitely_ better than the scientific method.

He keeps clicking around, carefully reading through the website’s frequently asked questions and the donor application form. The FAQ mentions _traditional methods of collection_ and the application has a lengthy consent section about the same thing. It also gives the donor the option to disclose their sexual orientation “so that we can send the appropriate representative to collect your sample in the comfort of your own home.”

Zhenya refuses to believe that Brandon was right, so he opens a new window and searches for words he’d seen over and over on the Infernalis site: incubus and succubus. Wikipedia gives him the basics; they’re demons in human form — an incubus is a male demon and a succubus, female — who seduce humans while they sleep. Zhenya wonders if that’s what’s meant by _traditional methods of collection_. He flips back to the Infernalis website FAQ.

_Q: How will my donation be collected?_

_A: If a Recipient selects you based on your profile, one of our representatives will visit you to collect a sperm sample in the privacy and comfort of your own home using traditional methods of collection. Donors are required to provide consent for these methods, which may include initiation of erotic dreams, collection of nocturnal emissions, and physical or sexual contact with Infernalis representatives. Donors may opt out of physical contact with Infernalis representatives when completing our application form._

After looking up a few more words, Zhenya has to admit that yeah, that sounds like demon sex. Or, at the very least, a demon causing him to have a wet dream and somehow collecting the… results.

It’s a lot to take in. Feeling dazed, Zhenya returns to his search results and starts absently scrolling through them. He skims through a few articles about incubus and succubus folklore. He skips over porn videos with titles like _Hot Twink gets Plowed by Incubus with Huge Cock_ and _Watch this Succubus SUCK Five Dicks_. He looks at Renaissance paintings of strange beasts crouched on the chests of naked, sprawling women and snapshots of cherubic babies who were reportedly conceived with Infernalis’s help. There are even websites railing against Infernalis itself, claiming that repeated sexual contact with demons results in deteriorating mental and physical health, or even death.

Zhenya thinks _that_ seems a little far-fetched, but he’s already astounded at all the things he hadn’t known about the world. Maybe he will die if he fucks a demon.

It overwhelms him suddenly — everything he’s learned and everything he’s considering, and he snaps his laptop shut with a resounding _snap_.

Maybe he’ll just stick to plasma.

*

Then, three weeks later, his car finally bites the dust once and for all. Which happens right before that owner of the duplex he’s renting informs him that he’s putting the property up for sale, which means that Zhenya has less than two months to find somewhere else to live and move there. To top it all off, Dixi picks up an eye infection from god knows where, so Zhenya’s stuck with bills for a vet visit and eye drops that are just as much fun to administer as they are to pay for. Беда не приходит одна.

His Infernalis application is approved within a week, and the up-front payment he receives as a result is enough to get him over the hump. When he fills it out, he hovers over the checkbox to opt out of any physical contact with his Infernalis representative, but he doesn’t click it. He’s single. What the hell.

He doesn’t forget about it after that, not exactly, but it does fade into the background.

Until late that summer.

*

In August, Zhenya gets an email from Infernalis. The subject line is an inconspicuous _You’ve Been Selected_ , which means that he almost misses it altogether, but his stomach turns over when he notices the sender and realizes it’s not just another piece of spam. He’s sitting in the corner of the break room at work — still at the sporting goods store, where he’s now working full time with his eyes on third key — thankfully alone, so he quickly opens the message. The contents are disappointingly sparse: his profile has been selected by an Infernalis Recipient, and a demon will visit him to collect his donation during a service window that’s five days long. The visit will take place in the evening or at night, and if Zhenya isn’t home when the demon arrives, they’ll keep trying until the window expires.

That’s all there is, other than two links: one to confirm his participation, and another to cancel or update his application.

“Hey, G,” someone says, and Zhenya jerks his head up, eyes wide, to see that Brandon has materialized. He settles into a chair on the other side of the table and cocks his head curiously. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Zhenya answers quickly. “I’m just surprise.” He glances back to the screen, letting his thumb drop onto the _confirm_ link before he pockets it, his heart pounding.

*

Nothing happens for the first two nights of his service window. On the third, Zhenya wakes up with a firm weight on his chest and a raging erection.

He lurches out of sleep, emerging groggily from a dream about being on the receiving end of the blowjob of his life. At first, he thinks that Dixi is curled up on top of him, but alarm sets in a few quickening heartbeats later. He's been shutting Dixi out of the room during his Infernalis service window, much to her dismay. Not only that, whatever’s on his breastbone is actually pressing him lightly down into the mattress, and even though it’s dark, Zhenya could swear there’s some sort of _presence_ —

There’s someone else in the room.

Zhenya scrambles to sit up, and the weight disappears from his sternum as he fumbles for the lamp. He squints against the light that floods the room, but even so, he can make out the figure standing near the bed. “Oh good,” a voice says. “You’re awake.”

“Who… _fuck_ …” Zhenya sputters as his vision clears. His visitor is a man — or at least he looks like a man, one around Zhenya’s age, simply dressed in dark clothes and carrying a tablet. He’s not exceptionally tall, but he looks strong and sturdily built. Despite that, he’s hanging a few steps back from the bed, his posture and his manner nonthreatening in a way that feels somehow deliberate. It seems like he’s waiting for something, which, Zhenya realizes as his brain comes online, he is. “You’re… incubus?” he asks, somehow managing to dredge the word up out of his memory.

Zhenya looks at him more closely, trying to find something otherworldly about him. He doesn’t have hooves or horns or fur or — from what Zhenya can see — a tail. The only things that might give him away are his eyes. They’re sharp and focused on Zhenya, intent and unnerving. The longer Zhenya watches him, the more it becomes apparent that he’s not blinking.

The man — the _demon_ — shrugs. “Incubus, succubus. People think they’re different things, but they’re not.”

Zhenya’s still muzzy from sleep, but he’s pretty sure his research said otherwise. “Really?”

“Really,” the demon says. “Trust me. I would know.”

“Okay.” Zhenya slumps a little and rubs his eyes. He did sign up for this, but it seems like there are better ways. He’d expected a knock on his door, at least. He has no idea what time it is, but it feels like the dead of night. There isn’t a hint of light from the windows, and the only sound he can hear from outside is the wind tossing the branches of the tree at the side of the building.

He’s distracted from that by a gentle tapping noise, and when he looks over at the demon again, Zhenya finds him focused on his tablet. “Okay, so, I’m here from Infernalis, but I’m sure you figured that out already. You’re Evgeni?”

Zhenya nods. “Can say Geno if you want.”

One corner of the demon’s mouth turns up and he glances over to meet Zhenya’s gaze for a moment. “Geno, eh? If you want.” He taps on the tablet again, then furrows his brow and frowns, then huffs and taps a little more forcefully.

“What’s yours?” Zhenya’s not sure if it’s an appropriate question or not, but it’s out of his mouth before he thinks better of it. He has no idea what demon etiquette might dictate.

“Sidney.”

The answer surprises Zhenya so much that he snorts, and the demon looks back up. His face is impassive, but his eyes are still strange and sharp, making Zhenya feel scrutinized and pinned in place all at once. “Is joke?” he asks cautiously.

“No joke. It’s my name. Why would it be a joke?”

“Just… normal name,” Zhenya says. “Incubus named _Sidney_?” He pauses, then adds hesitantly, “Succubus named Sidney?”

The demon goes back to his tablet. “Sex demon.”

Zhenya blinks. “What?”

“Sex demon,” Sidney repeats. “It’s easier. And gender neutral.”

The idea that a demon would be sensitive to that sort of thing is unexpected, but maybe the fifth most surprising thing that’s happened so far, so Zhenya’s about to let it slide, but then he finds himself growing curious. “So, you’re not —” he grimaces, not sure how to best phrase his question in English “— _have_ gender?”

“I’m male,” Sidney explains, still businesslike. Zhenya would never have expected to describe a creature from Hell as _businesslike_. “But that doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to my human form. I can be whatever.”

“Oh,” Zhenya says. Before he can help himself, he looks directly at Sidney’s crotch. That’s what he means, isn’t it?

He’s pretty sure his attention doesn’t go unnoticed, because Sidney sweeps his arm to one side, and when Zhenya tracks the motion, his tablet vanishes into thin air with a low, dull _pop_ that Zhenya feels in his eardrums. “If you’re curious,” Sidney comments, “we can do this the traditional way. After all, you’re awake now.”

Zhenya’s eyes flick back to the demon’s face and takes a careful breath, even as his heart rate ticks up. “Traditional way?”

“You didn’t opt out of contact with me in your application. So I can take your sample physically, if you want.”

Sidney takes a step towards the bed as he says it, raising his eyebrows, and Zhenya gulps. His mind is a blur of uncertainty and curiosity, sharp-edged with animal wariness and muddied with — yes — arousal. Zhenya can’t deny that the demon is attractive with his sharp jaw and his full lips and the obvious outlines of his body under his nondescript polo shirt and slacks. But that only stands to reason; after all, why _wouldn’t_ a sex demon assume an attractive human form?

When Zhenya doesn’t answer, Sidney shrugs and says, “Or you can —”

“Okay,” Zhenya interrupts him, rasping out the word. “We do traditional way.”

Sidney smiles, just a small, knowing curve, and that’s enough to make Zhenya’s cock stir with renewed interest. “Okay,” Sidney echoes, and then he’s there, right there, sitting on the edge of the mattress, with one palm pressed to the flat of Zhenya’s chest. His demeanor, his _presence_ , is so different from what it had been that it makes Zhenya’s head swim. Before, Sidney had seemed like an earnest, professional delivery person, but now the awkwardness has melted away. He’s laser focused on Zhenya, and his eyes — which, Zhenya can see now, are a golden brown that almost glows, or maybe they actually _are_ glowing — are locked on Zhenya’s in a way that makes him wonder if he’s being hypnotized.

He presses his hand firmly against Zhenya’s sternum, an echo of the way he’d woken Zhenya up, pushing Zhenya firmly down onto his back. Then he swings himself onto the bed, so he’s straddling Zhenya’s hips. There’s no time to take any of it in before Sidney lowers himself over Zhenya, his body a solid, heavy weight that’s warmer enough than normal for it to be noticeable. By contrast, his mouth on Zhenya’s is almost cool — it’s _minty_ , which amuses Zhenya in some detached corner of his brain as his lungs fill with the smell of woodsmoke and spices and sulfur. Sidney kisses him deep from the start, teasing at Zhenya’s lips with his tongue until Zhenya opens for him with a surprised groan. It’s indulgent and not as clumsy as it should be, wet and thorough — the way Zhenya likes to kiss a lover, someone he’s intimately familiar with. He wonders if somehow, the demon knows.

It’s a lot all at once, but Zhenya’s dick doesn’t seem to mind, filling quickly until it’s stiff and straining. Zhenya rocks his hips up unthinkingly, searching for some relief, and Sidney meets him firmly. He can’t feel much of anything between Sidney’s legs except heat, and Zhenya’s not sure if that means he’s not enjoying it, or maybe he’s choosing to have a vagina instead of a cock, or maybe he doesn’t have _anything_. What does Zhenya know about demon anatomy? Zhenya’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch and find out. He’s not even sure if he could. He’s as shaky as he was his very first time, so he’s got his hands fisted in Sidney’s dark polo shirt, just hanging on.

“How should we do this, Geno?” Sidney murmurs. He angles himself partway off of Zhenya’s body and tucks one hand down the front of Zhenya’s shorts, teasing at the head of his dick with touches that make Zhenya hiss and tremble. “I can take your donation with my hand —” he tightens his grip and gives Zhenya one solid tug “— or you can fuck me. My mouth or —”

He’s interrupted by a muffled electronic beeping.

Sidney goes still, then rolls off of Zhenya with a muttered, “Shit.” He sits up on the edge of the bed and his tablet reappears in his hand; then he taps it, silencing the alarm.

Zhenya pants up at him, his cock twitching for more, his head filled with fog. “What…?”

“I’ve got to get to my next appointment,” Sidney says. He seems remarkably unruffled, given what he’d been doing just a minute before. He straightens his shirt and stands, giving Zhenya an apologetic smile. “Sorry, they don’t schedule younger guys like you for very long.”

“ _What_?” Zhenya repeats more forcefully as Sidney stands. “That’s it?”

“You’ll be rescheduled,” Sidney promises. He backs away a step or two from the bed.

Zhenya rolls to the side and props himself up on one elbow. “Wait —”

“They’ll send you an email to let you know when your next window is,” Sidney says, and then he _pops_ out of existence, gone between one blink and the next, leaving only a shock of negative pressure in Zhenya’s ears.

For a moment Zhenya stares, frozen, still hard and aching, sitting in the rumpled mess of his bedsheets and the soft glow of his bedside lamp.

“What,” he says for a third time, then adds, emphatically, “ _the fuck_.”

*

Zhenya sleeps fitfully for the rest of the night.

That is, he sleeps fitfully after he furiously jerks off. At first, Zhenya thinks his erection will just wilt from the shock and strangeness of everything that had happened, and he’s fully prepared to let it. When he’s still stubbornly hard almost ten minutes later, he’s forced to take things into his own hands, quite literally. Maybe it’s because every time he tries to close his eyes, he either remembers the feeling of arching up into the solid weight of Sidney’s body or his mind wanders even farther back — to the dream he’d been having before he woke up. It’s easy enough to insert Sidney’s plush lips into it. His sheets still smell a little smoky, after all.

Or maybe sex demons have some kind of otherworldly cock-hardening powers.

Either way, Zhenya rubs one out, unloads a truly prodigious amount of come, and manages to drop into an uneasy slumber.

*

The next day passes in a daze. At work, Zhenya blames his distraction on a bad night’s sleep, which isn’t _entirely_ a lie. Brandon badgers him a bit, but he gives up when Zhenya does nothing but grump at him in return. Company policy dictates that Zhenya can’t look at his phone when he’s on the floor, but he’s glued to it in the break room, checking his email over and over again even though he doesn’t have any notifications.

In the end, Zhenya suffers through five days before he gets his next message from Infernalis. It’s enough time that he starts to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t an extremely vivid dream. His email history is the only thing that says otherwise, tethering the experience to reality.

When the notification of his next service window does arrive, it brings with it a split-second of relief before Zhenya’s stomach flips and starts to churn. He opens the email to the anticlimactic news that his next appointment won’t be until at least three weeks in the future. That’s definitely too long to live with his stomach tied in knots, so Zhenya once again clicks _confirm_ and tries to put it out of his mind.

That much proves to be impossible. The more he tries to force himself to focus on other things — anything else at all — the more he fixates on it, wonders about it. Mostly he wonders if it’ll be Sidney in his bedroom again, or if he’ll be assigned to some other demon. It shouldn’t matter. It _doesn’t_ matter, Zhenya tells himself. It’s just that Zhenya wouldn’t mind finishing what they started, that’s all. And really, Sidney is his only frame of reference when it comes to demons, so when he finds himself daydreaming about what that next appointment might be like, it’s Sidney he imagines.

It seems like a long time to wait. Zhenya gets it: the timing of the whole thing is going to be based on the fertility cycle of the Recipient who’s selected him. Zhenya finds himself wondering about them too. Where do they live? Why did they decide to use Infernalis? If they do get pregnant, are they going to raise the baby alone, or do they have a partner who’ll raise it with them?

The baby.

That’s the goal of all this isn’t it? For someone to end up with a baby. Just not Zhenya. Not that he’s in any way ready to have a baby of his own, but it’s still strange to think that if this whole endeavor is successful, he might have a son or daughter out there in the world somewhere. He might never know if there’s a baby at all, or he might walk past his own child on the street without recognizing them. The baby might be born on the other side of the world. Zhenya’s pretty sure Infernalis isn’t going to be limited by something like geography.

Imagining becoming a father but not knowing his child makes Zhenya’s stomach feel different — like a rock. On the other hand, maybe the Recipient will let him get to know his hypothetical son or daughter. And _that_ thought makes him nervous enough to feel sick.

Maybe he should just cancel the whole thing.

But he doesn’t.

*

On the first night of his next service window, Zhenya’s pretty sure that he sleeps for a grand total of forty-five minutes. Maybe. It all turns out to be for naught; he ends the night the way he starts it — alone.

The second night is the same. So is the third.

By the fourth night, Zhenya is so exhausted that he falls asleep early, only to be awoken by the _pop_ that — he assumes — announces the materialization of a demon in his bedroom. Zhenya’s instantly on alert, and he flips over to turn on the lamp. It floods the room to reveal Sidney, who looks startled, like he’d started to approach the bed but had stepped back. “Uh, hi,” he says awkwardly. “So… you’re awake.”

“Sidney,” Zhenya grumbles, pulling himself up so that he’s sitting propped up against his pillows. “Wasn’t sure if it’s you or someone new.” He tries to tamp down on the little fizz of excitement that he feels at having the demon back in his room, and when he can’t, he chalks it up to nerves.

“It’s me,” Sidney confirms. His tablet is in his hand, but he vanishes it right away and moves to sit at the foot of Zhenya’s bed. With a smirk, he asks, “Think we can get everything taken care of this time?”

Zhenya huffs out a breath, something that’s close to a laugh but not quite there. “Can try, I guess.”

Sidney actually chuckles at that. “I think we can do better than try.”

“Okay,” Zhenya says, and Sidney moves quickly to kneel over Zhenya’s lap and kiss him, his hands bracketing Zhenya’s jaw.

This time, when Sidney settles his body onto Zhenya’s, there’s a distinct hardness between his legs that makes Zhenya’s belly burn when he feels it. Reflexively, Zhenya clamps his hands to Sidney’s hips and thrusts up, his own cock wasting no time in rising to the task. “Yeah,” Sidney encourages him, “that’s it.”

Everything accelerates quickly, so fast that it leaves Zhenya reeling. Sidney drives him relentlessly towards orgasm: rocking firmly down against Zhenya’s erection, sloppily kissing his panting mouth, running his hands up under Zhenya’s t-shirt to tweak at his nipples. Zhenya strains and groans and tries to keep up. _Short appointments_ , he thinks. At the rate things are going, this one definitely isn’t going to last very long.

“So,” Sidney says, pausing to give a nip to Zhenya’s lower lip. “How should we do this?”

He shifts back just slightly, enough that he can palm Zhenya’s dick through his shorts, and Zheyna wants nothing more than to rut and to come. Every inch of his body is crying out for it, from his scalp to his toes to his drawn-tight balls. It takes all the willpower he has — and some he hadn’t known about — to gasp out, “Wait.”

Sidney stops moving. “Wait?”

“Can’t… do this…” Zhenya pants. He reaches down to push Sidney’s hand away.

Sidney’s face registers a moment of surprise, then it shutters. He swings off of Zhenya’s lap and sits beside him on the bed. “Sure, because of the demon thing. Okay, well —” he raises his hand and pulls a plastic cup out of the air “— you can just do a deposit in —”

“No,” Zhenya cuts him off. “Is not…” He takes one last heaving breath and struggles to pull himself more upright. “Not because you’re demon. I just… don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Sidney asks. He looks confused, but at least he vanishes the specimen cup.

Zhenya huffs and frowns. He’s not sure he can think, much less coherently explain himself. “Вы говори́те по-ру́сски?” he tries, feeling a little ridiculous for asking the question formally given the fact that he’d been seconds from coming under Sidney’s hand. Sidney has never spoken anything but English in front of Zhenya, but he’s a demon. He should know every language on Earth, shouldn’t he?

Apparently not. Sidney gives him a sympathetic grimace in response and says, “Sorry. I speak mostly English. Some French. No Russian.”

At first, Zhenya is inclined to tell him to forget about it. To cancel the whole thing, take Zhenya off the list, and leave him alone. But — he’s still torn. And he hasn’t been able to talk to _anyone_ about this. Zhenya has a great time with his buddies from the store, but he’s definitely not close enough to any of them for deep philosophical conversations about fatherhood-via-sperm-donation, especially when Zhenya can’t express all the nuances of his feelings as well as he’d like. He suspects most of them would focus more on the demon-fucking aspect of it than anything else, anyway. He could probably talk to Gonch, a good friend whose couch he’d crashed on for months after arriving in the States, but they don’t live in the same city anymore, and every time Zhenya has considered calling him up for advice on the matter, it just felt too strange. That only leaves his parents and his brother, and the thought of telling _them_ what he’s been up to practically gives him hives.

So Zhenya looks at Sidney speculatively and says, “I’m always know I want kids. Be, you know, father. Like this though… I don’t know.”

Comprehension dawns on Sidney’s face. “You don’t have to be involved in the child’s life, if it works out. There aren’t any expectations of you.”

Zhenya makes a frustrated noise and shakes his head. “No, not that. Is like… I _want_ to know my kid, if someone has. But they might not want me, you know? Like, might be secret and I just… never know.”

“That’s true,” Sidney says, blunt and without a hint of sugarcoating. “If there is a baby, it’s completely up to the parent or parents whether they give you any information or let you meet them. But on the other hand, they might be fine with it.” He pauses, twisting his lips, then adds, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s close enough for you to visit. If everyone agrees to it.”

Zhenya’s not sure if that revelation makes him feel better or worse, and he bursts out, “It’s _scare_ me, Sidney. Make me nervous. Not sure I’m ready, even if baby is with someone else, and I’m just visit. I don’t _know_.” He tents his knees and props his elbows on them, digging the heels of his hands into the ridge of his brow, trying to relieve some of the mounting tension there.

“Hey.” Sidney’s voice is quiet, and Zhenya jumps when Sidney’s hand lands on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do this. And I think — maybe try to think of it from the other side. There’s someone out there who really wants to have a kid. You can be the person that makes it happen for them.”

Zhenya groans and drops his hands. “So if I don’t do, I’m selfish.”

“Not at all,” Sidney says, quick and guileless. “I think it’s awesome that you’re thinking about this. Most of our donors don’t.”

“No?” Zhenya asks, peeking over at him.

Which means he gets to see it when Sidney flashes him a small, rueful smile. “Nah, mostly they just want to fuck a demon.”

Zhenya snorts, and Sidney smiles a little wider. It’s enough to break the tension, and Zhenya feels his shoulders slump. “Well,” he asks, “what now?” He’s not hard anymore, and he feels too emotionally exhausted to even want to get it back up, much less make it happen. He’s not really in the right headspace to make any kind of decision about moving forward, and surely the alloted time for his short appointment is almost over anyway.

“We can reschedule again,” Sidney assures him, and Zhenya’s ears catch on the word _we_.

“You come back again?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“ _You_ ,” Zhenya presses, because he has to make sure. “Not other demon?” Now that he and Sidney have had this conversation, he doesn’t want to start the whole process over with someone else.

“Me,” Sidney confirms. “I was assigned to your case, so it’ll be me.” His explanation is strangely deflating, but Zhenya isn’t sure why exactly.

Instead of pondering it, he keeps up his interrogation. “And is… okay? That you come back again. They don’t…” he pauses, trying to find the right words. “Cancel? Because I don’t… donate?”

“You’ll get one more try,” Sidney says as he climbs out of the bed. “Our policy is three strikes and you’re out. Not that I’ve ever had that happen.”

Zhenya cocks his head. “No?”

Sidney grins again. “No. I’m very good at my job.” The alarm on his tablet sounds distantly, and Sidney reaches it into being to silence it. He gives Zhenya an awkward little wave, then _pops_ out of existence.

“Bye,” Zhenya says to the empty room. It’s not like he was going to argue with that anyway.

*

The wait for his next appointment is both better and worse. Better because Zhenya knows what to expect; worse because he waffles back and forth daily about what he wants to do. He still hasn’t made up his mind by the day before his next service window starts. He knows that if he’s not going to go through with it, he should reach out to Infernalis and cancel altogether, but something keeps holding him back. When he goes to bed that night, he advises himself sternly that he has to make up his mind by noon the next day. He’s not going to make Sidney come all the way to his apartment from — wherever it is he comes from — if Zhenya’s just going to tell him that he’s changed his mind.

He’s startled awake a few hours later by a tell-tale _pop_.

“Sidney?” he asks groggily as he grapples for the light in a routine that’s starting to feel familiar.

When he turns it on, he finds Sidney standing where he usually does when he appears, halfway across the room. “It’s me,” he affirms, giving Zhenya a crooked smile. “Hi.”

Zhenya squints at him, trying to get his bearings. “What you doing? Think you not here ‘til tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Sidney says, dropping his eyes. “Well, it’s — it’s uh, almost midnight,” he explains, gesturing toward his tablet, presumably at a clock, “so technically your appointment window is open in a few minutes.”

“Only midnight?” Zhenya grumbles. “Is early for you.” Both of the other times that Sidney had visited had been closer to three in the morning.

“Well,” Sidney hedges, still looking strangely shifty, “we’ve got more time tonight. I don’t have to leave so fast.”

“More time?” Zhenya echoes. Everything still seems off-kilter. Maybe Sidney had woken him up at a bad time in his sleep cycle.

Sidney nods. “We’ve needed it before. So.”

Zhenya thinks it’s very magnanimous of a bunch of demons to not only give him three chances to make his donation, but grant him an extra-long appointment when the first two had proved too short. Suspiciously so, but it doesn’t seem like Sidney’s going to give him any more details, so finally, Zhenya just shrugs and says, “Okay.”

Sidney brightens. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re up. It didn’t feel right to —” Sidney raises his hand to his own chest and mimes pressing there “— since I didn’t know what you decided to do.”

Well, Zhenya hadn’t either. But since he doesn’t have any more time to think about it, it really only leaves him with one choice. His shoulders slump. “Sidney… don’t think I can.” Deep down, it feels right, but saying it makes Zhenya feel like shit all the same. Thinking of the person who’d chosen him, waited two months, and come up empty makes his heart hurt. “I’m sorry,” he adds miserably.

“Geno,” Sidney says, his voice surprisingly kind. Zhenya’s not sure if he’s ever addressed him by name before, other than right after Geno suggested he use it. It feels… comforting. “It’s okay. You have to do what’s right for you. They’ll be disappointed, but we’ll find them someone else.”

“Can you say to them? Say I’m sorry?” Zhenya asks suddenly. “Or give them message? Something?”

“I can try. I’ll put a note in your file,” Sidney promises, gesturing toward his tablet. As he does, he tilts it in such a way that Zhenya can see the screen for the first time, and what Zhenya finds there isn’t at all what he’d expected. It’s such a shock that it actually distracts him from his guilt.

“Is that,” he asks, “…hockey?”

Sidney angles the tablet back toward himself, looking down at what Zhenya’s pretty sure is a paused NHL game. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I was watching it before I got here.”

“You watch _hockey_?”

“Yeah,” Sidney says. He seems taken aback by Zhenya’s incredulity. “Why are you asking like that?”

“You’re _demon_ ,” Zhenya says, like that explains everything. In his mind, it does.

Sidney shrugs. “So? I like stuff.”

Zhenya rolls his eyes. What a thing to say. “But it’s human thing.”

“I like human stuff,” Sidney retorts.

He’s starting to look defensive, so Zhenya tries to rein himself in. “Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what demons do. Other than — you know.”

Sidney gives a snort and visibly relaxes. “All kinds of different stuff, just like people. Some of us like to read, paint —” he holds up his tablet “— watch sports, whatever.”

“Are there, like, demon books? Demon sports?” Zhenya asks, his curiosity piqued. “Or only human?”

“There are,” Sidney replies. “But we don’t have hockey. Hell isn’t exactly conducive to ice rinks.”

Zhenya’s eyebrows shoot up at how casually Sidney says it. “You really from Hell? It’s real?” He’d been assuming it is — the fact that there are demons implies the existence of Hell — but it’s another thing to have it confirmed in passing.

Sidney’s face is amused. “Well, yeah. What did you think?”

“I’m _not_ think,” Zhenya says. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Sidney vanishes the tablet and sits in the chair that Zhenya has wedged in the corner. By some miracle, it’s not completely covered in laundry at the moment, just a shirt or two draped over the back. “What do you want to know?”

There are suddenly so many things that Zhenya is wondering about that he can’t think of a single one. Instead, he asks, “You stay?”

Sidney frowns. “Stay where? Hell? Of course I stay there. I live there.”

“No, no,” Zhenya says, shaking his head in frustration. “You stay here, now?”

“Oh. Sure.”

Zhenya cocks his head. “You have other appointments?”

Sidney shifts in his seat and glances down, smoothing his pants over his knees. “I told you, we have a longer time today. I can hang out for a while.”

“You _want_ hang out?” Surely, a demon must have better things to do than sit around while Zhenya peppers him with questions.

“Sure,” Sidney says again. He looks back up and smiles. “Why not? So hit me.”

Zhenya watches him critically, and Sidney looks patiently back, waiting. It’s quite the proposition: the opportunity to ask a demon anything he wants, anything at all. So naturally, what comes out of his mouth is: “Who’s your favorite team?”

Sidney looks surprised at that. “Team?”

“Hockey team,” Zhenya clarifies. “Or you just watch everyone?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I do watch everyone. But the Pens are my favorite.”

Zhenya dips his chin, giving Sidney a look of disbelief. “You just say because you’re in Pittsburgh.”

“No, really!” Sidney insists. “It’s part of why I jumped at this assignment though.” Before Zhenya can ask him what other parts made him want to take it, Sidney continues, “What about you? Are you a fan?”

“I love hockey,” Zhenya says, getting comfortable against the pillows. “I’m play, back home, when I’m young. Russia hockey best, but I like Pens too, now I’m here. Kind of have to, in Pittsburgh. Like some other teams too.”

“Oh yeah, like who?”

“You know, Capitals, Flyers,” Zhenya lies, not even entirely sure that Sidney will get the joke. The expression on his face clearly shows that he does, and Zhenya laughs.

Sidney gives him a look and fires back, “The Caps, eh? You must really like Ovechkin, then. He’s Russian.”

Zhenya feels his own face contort into something conflicted, and _Sidney_ laughs, and then they’re off. Sidney hadn’t been lying when he’d claimed to like hockey and watch everyone. They cover a huge variety of topics, from the Pens middling start to the season, to the emergence of Guentzel, to the Pens power play, to who has the best power play, to who has the best goalie, to the loss of Fleury, to the pros and cons of playing a goalie tandem, to who’s best positioned heading into the winter, and even to concussion protocols. Sidney is deeply knowledgeable about all of it, and he has an opinion about everything. Better yet, he listens patiently to Zhenya while he finds the words to express himself. He’s not afraid to argue, but there’s nothing mean-spirited about it. He laughs when Zhenya teases him.

It’s nothing that Zhenya would have expected, but it’s a more-than-enjoyable way to spend — Zhenya glances at the clock on his bedside table — almost an hour and a half. He raises his eyebrows and turns back to Sidney with an urgent, “Sidney, it’s long time!”

He interrupts Sidney directly in the middle of a diatribe about the top Calder prospects through the season so far, and Sidney frowns at him. “What? A long time until the season’s over? Yeah, I know.”

“No,” Zhenya says. “We’re talk for so long. How long is appointment? Don’t want for you be late.”

“Oh.” Sidney looks uncomfortable again. He tilts his hand like he’s looking at a watch that he’s not wearing. “What time is it?”

“It's one-thirty soon.”

Sidney makes an aborted motion like he’s going to stand, then he actually does. “It’s, uh, ninety minutes. So I guess I should get going.”

Zhenya feels a sinking sense of disappointment. Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the time, but surely Sidney’s alarm would have gone off any minute anyway. Before Sidney can _pop_ back out of the room, Zhenya blurts, “Have you ever gone to game?”

If Sidney looks startled at hearing the question, it’s nowhere near as surprised as Zhenya is at having asked it. “To a hockey game? No, actually, I haven’t.”

“Really? Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Sidney says with a shrug. He seems uncomfortable again. “I just never have, I guess.”

“You want to?”

Sidney’s watching him carefully now. “Like… in theory? Or like…”

“Like Saturday,” Zhenya interrupts. “There’s game at night. You only can come out at night, right? I get tickets for us.”

“Oh, I — I don’t know,” Sidney hedges.

“You have work?”

“No.”

“Then come to game,” Zhenya says, offering Sidney a broad smile. “You like hockey so much, should at least go once.”

“I —” Sidney starts, then interrupts himself, snapping his jaw shut and visibly changing course. “You know what? I will.”

Zhenya’s heart is ricocheting around in his chest. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he feels buoyed by a sudden rush of accomplishment. “Yes!” he exclaims. “You have so much fun, you’ll see.”

Sidney smiles. “I think I will. I’ll meet you there, okay? Outside, by the statue. I’ll find you.”

“Okay,” Zhenya replies. “See you there. Bye, Sidney.”

“Why don’t you call me Sid?” he says. “Bye, Geno.”

And then he’s gone. Zhenya flops back down against his pillows. When he glances over at the clock again, he sees that the numbers read 1:32, but Sid’s alarm had never gone off.

*

When Zhenya plans how Saturday is going to play out, he’s forced to admit that _I’ll meet you there, outside, I’ll find you_ doesn't give him much information to go on in terms of when he should arrive at the arena. To make matters worse, it’s a cold day, with a strong wind that’s previewing the winter to come. Zhenya isn’t excited to stand outside in it for any length of time, but it would be worse still to turn up at the last minute if _Sid_ has been waiting around. At least the rain that had been soaking the city overnight and into the morning had finally petered out. Thank heaven for small favors, Zhenya thinks. Or maybe thank Hell?

In the end, he puts on multiple layers under his jersey and a jacket over it so that he can arrive at PPG half an hour before the doors open, which is an hour before the game itself. Even though Zhenya isn’t enthusiastic about possibly having to hover for up to ninety minutes, watching the excitement build for the game helps pass the time. The stream of fans swells from a trickle to a stream; the lines outside the doors grow. There are excited children riding on their parents’ shoulders, friends of all ages traveling in packs, couples on dates, and supporters of the opposing team both bold and self-conscious. He watches one group after another take pictures in front of the Lemieux statue. There’s a palpable buzz in the bright lights under the dark sky, and then, just as the doors open, Sid appears at his side, seemingly from nowhere. “Hey,” he says, and Zhenya jumps a mile.

“Sid!” Zhenya exclaims. “You give me heart attack! Can’t just… _appear_ like that.”

“I didn’t,” Sid protests. “I walked up from over there.” He points back towards Washington Place, where a busker is playing a saxophone. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

“I’m pay attention,” Zhenya grumbles, even though he’d been facing an entirely different direction. He feels thrown off-balance by Sid’s sudden arrival, and it’s strange to see Sid outside of the context of his bedroom at all. He’s wearing a nondescript dark jacket and dark blue jeans instead of his usual dress pants. His eyes seem closer to glowing than usual in the street lights as he looks around with interest. He seems like he’s in a good mood, and Zhenya wants him to have fun, so he shakes himself out of his sulk. “Hi,” he says in a friendlier tone. “Glad you’re here.”

Sid grins. “I am too.”

By unspoken agreement, they join one of the lines at the doors. Zhenya fishes the tickets out of his pocket — they’re not great seats, but he doesn’t have the money for great seats. They’ll be sitting in the upper deck, above one of the blue lines, so they’ll have a good bird’s-eye view of the entire game, or at least that’s how Zhenya is spinning it in his own mind. Sid looks down as Zhenya produces them and asks, “Oh, how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Zhenya answers in surprise. He holds the tickets a little closer to himself, like Sid might grab one and try to pay for it.

“I have money,” Sid insists.

Zhenya shakes his head. “Won’t take. I’m invite you, as —” _as what?_ he asks himself frantically “— as friend, so I pay.”

Something about that makes a pleased look steal over Sid’s face. “Friends, eh?” he says. “All right, I guess I can live with that.”

They don’t make a lot of conversation as the line creeps forward, but Sid keeps watching everything intently. He doesn’t look uncomfortable, and somehow, that keeps Zhenya from feeling uncomfortable. Zhenya points out someone with particularly impressive face paint and an adorable little girl wearing a youth team hockey jersey and a Pens cap. “Look, she plays,” he mutters, and Sid smiles again.

Just before they make it to the doors, Sid turns to him and says, “This is great.”

“Yeah?” Zhenya swells up with pride as they step toward the ticket taker. “It’s getting greater now.”

After they make their way through security, Sid’s head is still on a swivel as he takes in everything. Zhenya nudges him and gestures to the Pens Gear store. “You want go in? Can get something to wear.”

Sid frowns and looks down at himself. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“Nothing,” Zhenya says, “but it’s just plain. Maybe you want Pens shirt? Or hat?”

“You’re wearing a jacket,” Sid points out.

Zhenya unzips it a little at the collar to show his jersey underneath. “Plus I have hat,” he adds, pointing at his own head, like Sid might not understand otherwise.

Sid does look tempted, even as he grouses, “I’m wearing black. That’s one of their colors.”

“No fun,” Zhenya retorts, goading him unapologetically.

He’s delighted when Sid heaves a big sigh and says, “Okay, okay.” They weave their way through the crowd and into the store, which is busy, jammed with people and hard to navigate. They check out clothing first — Sid deems jerseys too expensive, but seems tempted by some of the t-shirts and sweatshirts — and then look at everything: kitchenware and Christmas ornaments and pucks and computer accessories and posters. “Who picks these?” Zhenya complains, pointing to a pennant. It’s got a picture of Letang on it, and Zhenya wouldn’t have thought it was possible to make Letang look bad, but there’s a picture right in front of him to prove it. Someone actually _chose_ it to put on this pennant. And the Penguins expect him to pay over twenty dollars for it. He imitates the face Letang is making, and Sid laughs.

In the end, Sid agrees to buy a t-shirt. He ducks into a bathroom to change into it, and he comes out with his jacket tucked under his arm.

“It’s cold in there, you know,” Zhenya advises him, as though he’s imparting some great wisdom. Of _course_ it’s cold in there. It’s a hockey rink.

“I know,” Sid says. “I’ll be fine.”

Zhenya wrinkles up his nose. “But you say that — where you’re from — it’s warm, right?”

Sid nods, looking amused. “It is. That doesn’t mean I like it.”

Zhenya frowns at him with all the weight of the four layers he’s wearing, and Sid laughs again.

They have to make their way to the top of the elevators and the stairs to get to the nosebleed seats Zhenya had been able to afford. Sid doesn’t seem bothered by it, his expression happy and excited every time Zhenya peeks over at him. When they finally emerge into the arena itself, Sid’s eyes go big, and then he looks up at the banners in the rafters — and he blinks.

“Sid, you blink!” Zhenya exclaims, and Sid’s head whips toward him.

“Of course I blinked,” Sid says, casting a few pointed glances around them. “Everyone blinks.”

Zhenya, chagrined, mutters, “No one hears me.” It’s true — they’re well past the ushers standing near the door, and no one else is all that close. There’s a group of several college kids a few rows down, but they’re not paying Sid or Zhenya any attention.

“Still, you can’t just say things like that,” Sid hisses as they scoot into their seats. “What if someone did hear?”

“Maybe they think we have private joke, for just the two of us. Like…” Zhenya trails off and flaps one hand.

“An inside joke?” Sid suggests.

“Yes! Maybe they think that.”

“Maybe,” Sid allows, and he does look mollified. After checking to make sure that there really isn’t anyone nearby, he adds, conversationally, “We’re kind of like cats.”

Zhenya squints at him. “Cats?”

“Yeah. You have a cat, right?”

And Zhenya does, of course, but having Sid mention her just makes him want to squint harder. “How you know?” he asks. He’s pretty sure that Sid has never even seen Dixi. Zhenya had kept her out of the bedroom those first couple times, and he assumed she'd hidden herself away the most recent time Sid had been in his apartment. She’s never liked strangers.

“I have very good hearing,” Sid says. He presses his lips together for a moment in a quick, considering gesture, then adds, quieter, “And a very good sense of smell.”

 _That’s_ news to Zhenya. A lot of things occur to him all at once, but the one that sticks in his mind is the amount of cologne he’d put on before leaving his apartment, and he wonders if he should excuse himself to the bathroom and try to scrub it off his skin. Of course, then he would just smell like public restroom soap. “So, uh…” Zhenya hedges, trying to ignore the creeping suspicion that he smells like he took a dip in a vat of chemical sandalwood, “cats?”

Sid nods as he flips through his program. “Yeah, you know how they don’t have to blink their outer eyelids very much? And they have a third eyelid underneath? It’s like that. But you can’t see the third one when I’m… like this.”

Zhenya finds himself examining Sid’s strong human profile — his distinctive nose, his full lips — and wondering what he looks like underneath. As if sensing the scrutiny, Sid glances up at him and, very deliberately, blinks. Zhenya chuckles, and Sid smiles and goes back to scanning through the roster.

Sid grows quieter as fans filter into the seats around them, but he watches the teams warm up with keen interest. Zhenya kicks himself a little — he should have asked Sid if he wanted to go down to the ice level during the pregame. It’s too late to do anything about it, though, but maybe he can suggest it if they go another time. As soon as he thinks it, Zhenya chastises himself; it’s probably too early to start pondering potential next times when _this time_ hasn’t even really started yet.

It’s not long before it does though, after the hype video and the team introductions and the anthem. And when the puck drops, Sid makes up for his earlier silence by leaning slightly towards Zhenya and proceeding to _not shut up for the entire game_. He analyzes everything, pointing out good passes, poor line changes, missed opportunities, strong entries, and blown calls. It’s both incredibly endearing and thoroughly annoying, and Zhenya is completely charmed. By the end of the first period, the Pens are down 0-2, which isn’t ideal, but Zhenya still turns to Sid with a teasing smile. “Maybe you should be coach, you say so much.”

Fascinatingly, Sid looks both embarrassed and pleased at the comment. “I told you I like to watch hockey.”

“You watch every game forever to know everything?” Zhenya continues to chirp him.

Sid cuts a look at him out of the corner of his eye and says, “Basically, yeah. As long as they’ve been on TV anyway.”

Once again, Sid manages to shut Zhenya up by answering a simple question truthfully. Now all he’s wondering is just how old Sid is, but he can’t ask now and expect an honest answer. Instead, he just clucks his tongue and retorts, “Such expert. You want food?”

And that is when Zhenya learns that Sidney, literal sex demon from Hell, absolutely _loves_ food. They get pizza logs and milkshakes, greasy nachos and popcorn, and Sid insists on paying for all of it, which he does in cash. Zhenya offers to buy them both beers, but Sid shrugs and says that alcohol doesn’t have much effect on demons, so Zhenya opts for bottles of water instead, in some small concession to good health. Sid puts away everything with enthusiasm, and Zhenya can’t help commenting, “Wasn’t sure if you’d like.” It’s an oblique enough statement, he thinks, when what he really means is _I didn’t even know if demons eat food_.

“I do,” Sid confirms, sucking some nacho cheese off his thumb.

Zhenya watches this with interest, then asks, “They don’t have, where you’re from? Food, I mean.”

“No, they do. Really good food, where I’m from.”

Not for the first time, Zhenya wishes he could ask more, but it’s not the time or the place. “You ever go to restaurants here?”

Sid shakes his head, having already filled his mouth with another nacho. After he swallows, he elaborates. “We don’t usually, uh — spend a lot of time here. Unless we’re working. And it’s kind of weird to go to one alone, isn’t it?”

Zhenya shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Can bring book, read. Tablet,” he adds, nudging Sid with his elbow.

The corner of Sid’s mouth ticks up. “I guess.”

“Or bring someone with,” Zhenya suggests, nonchalant. He wants to offer to give Sid a full culinary tour of Pittsburgh, but his heart is suddenly drumming so hard in his chest that it’s hard to get the words out.

“Most other —” Sid starts, then he pauses and changes tack. “My, um, my other friends wouldn’t want to.”

Frustration bubbles up inside of Zhenya again. He has so many _questions_. “Someone else, then. New friend maybe.”

“Like you, eh?” Sid grins as he crunches down on another chip.

Even though Zhenya is fist-pumping mentally, he gives a casual one-shouldered shrug. “Sure, I go if you want.”

Sid snorts. “Real slick, Geno.”

Before Zhenya can respond, there’s a flurry of activity on the ice, and a breakaway, and a goal for the Pens, which he and Sid celebrate enthusiastically, even though the volume of the goal horn makes him flinch. By the end of the night, the Pens have a 4-3 comeback win and Zhenya has plans to meet Sid for dinner in ten days’ time, so he considers the entire evening a resounding success.

*

On their first dinner out, Zhenya meets Sid at the Primanti Brothers in Market Square. Initially, he thinks it’s a good plan, because if he ends up paying, it’ll be cheap. Unfortunately, the restaurant is crowded, so they wind up eating at the bar, and they can’t really discuss anything that Zhenya is curious about. Instead, they talk over the Pens games that have happened since the one they attended, and Zhenya tells Sid a little bit about growing up in Russia. Sid eats everything that’s put in front of him, praises all of it heartily, and doesn’t hesitate to ask Zhenya, “Where are we eating next?”

Without thinking it through, Zhenya suggests burgers next, so their next outing is to Burgatory. Zhenya eats a bison burger and chips and it’s delicious, but it’s still too busy to be able to have a real conversation. Sid would probably be happy to talk hockey the whole time, but he asks Zhenya more questions about his life too. Zhenya finds himself opening up more than he usually would; instead of giving bland answers about looking for more opportunity, he tells Sid about wanting to live somewhere that would allow him to be more free in who he is as a person. Sid already knows that from Zhenya’s Infernalis application that he’s not picky about the gender of the people he sleeps with, so it doesn’t really matter if Zhenya tells the truth the way he’s always been afraid to with the guys at the store. He surprises himself when he tells Sid the whole story: how he’d saved up to buy his plane ticket and put away a tiny nest egg, how he’d conspired with Gonch to make the move, how he’d broken his parents’ hearts by not telling them the truth until a week before he’d gone because he’d been afraid that they’d stand in his way or worse, talk him out of it.

How he’s afraid he’s disappointing them now because he hasn’t been more successful in America.

Sid listens with sympathy, and he actually makes Zhenya feel a little better when he says, “I think it would make any parent proud to watch their kid make hard decisions and follow their own path to lead a happier life. Are you happy?” He reaches out and puts his hand on Zhenya’s forearm. Zhenya’s own fingers are curled stiffly around his glass.

And in that moment, his belly full of good food, with Sid touching his arm and Sid’s glowing eyes locked on his, it’s hard for Zhenya to say anything other than yes.

“Then I’m sure they’re happy for you,” Sid says, and he takes his hand away.

After that, Zhenya decides he needs a plan. He’s rabidly interested to know more about Sid, and deep inside, he knows that it’s not just intellectual curiosity, but that his big, stupid heart is starting to yearn for more too. Whichever organs are involved, he’s never going to learn anything new if they keep going to restaurants that seat their patrons mere inches apart. So, he plans.

When Sid asks which restaurant they’ll try next, Zhenya says that he hasn’t decided yet and that Sid should just meet him at his apartment instead. They choose a day, and Zhenya does his research to select a steakhouse that looks like it isn’t too busy on weeknights. He looks up pictures of the dining room online, and he’s gratified to see that their tables don’t look to be stacked on top of each other. He makes a reservation. He cleans his car.

Zhenya couldn’t be happier with how everything plays out when they’re seated. He and Sid are tucked into a corner booth, and the next table is empty. There’s an older couple in the next booth, but the backs are tall, so Zhenya still feels like their space is isolated and private. After a bit of haggling over who’s going to pay, they order steak and truffle French fries and charred corn and lobster mac and cheese. Sid adds on glasses of Cabernet, and shrugs when Zhenya raises an eyebrow at him. “It goes well with steak, right?” he asks.

Then, when they’re blissfully alone and waiting for their food, Zhenya has his opening, and he has to use it before Sid gets started on hockey. He discovers that, as much as he’d planned, he hadn’t given any thought to an opening line. What comes out of his mouth is, “So, how’s work?”

Sid looks at him skeptically. “You want to hear about my work?”

Zhenya wrinkles up his nose. “Not, like, details,” he says, because he definitely does _not_ want to think about what Sid is doing when he’s not hanging out with Zhenya. He tries very hard to never think about that, as a matter of fact. Zhenya knows what Sid does, and he understands that it’s Sid’s job, but it doesn’t stop his stomach from curling up from jealousy whenever his traitorous brain slips up and reminds him. Here he is developing _feelings_ , and he and Sid had never even gotten to fully do the deed; meanwhile, who knows how many people Sid has had sex with in the meantime. It’s not fair, or at least Zhenya doesn’t think it is. “But just… it’s good?”

“It’s good,” Sid replies, but he still sounds suspicious. He tilts his head to the side as he butters a piece of bread. “Why do you ask?”

Having come this far, Zhenya soldiers on. “I’m just want know more. When we talk, it’s all me, me, me. For you, all I know is hockey, food, work, so I’m start there.”

“Fair enough,” Sid says. “Well, it’s good. Lots of success stories, which is the best part. I like that my job helps people so much.”

Zhenya snorts. “ _That’s_ best part?”

“For sure. What else would be?”

Despite the privacy of their booth, Zhenya drops his voice. “Have sex all the time?”

Comprehension dawns on Sid’s face as he takes a bite of bread and chews it. After he swallows, he replies in equally hushed tones. “I get what you’re saying, but sex is just work for me. It’s my job. It’s not really a benefit. We do _have_ really good benefits, though.”

“Just work?” Zhenya repeats. He feels a little sick when he remembers just how much he’d enjoyed his first brief encounters with Sid, when maybe Sid had just been enduring them. “So… you don’t like?”

“It’s not that,” Sid says quickly. “I mean… I’m good at my job, and it’s always fun to do something you’re good at, right? I don’t _dis_ like it. But it’s just… a means to an end. I have to really like someone to want to have sex with them just for fun.”

He’s looking intently at Zhenya while he speaks, and Zhenya's snared by it, unsure how to respond to that, unable to say anything other than, “Oh.”

The waiter chooses that moment to deliver their wine, and Zhenya is grateful for the interruption and the ability to take a gulp of it. With that done, he glances back up at Sid. “I’m sorry for think what I did.”

Sid's eyebrows quirk up. “You don’t have to apologize. Not really. A lot of people think that way, and they’re — way worse about it. Too many people only sign up at IFC because of the, you know —” he glances around and whispers the next few words “— sex with a demon thing. And a lot of people are real assholes about it. We’re not prostitutes, not that there’s anything wrong with being a sex worker. But it’s not about the sex, you know? We’re trying to do a service and help people start families when they can’t do it themselves. You weren't like that, though. I never felt like you were just in it for the sex.”

“No,” Zhenya says, but he’s still shamefaced as he admits, “I’m sign up for money.”

Sid shrugs. “That’s okay. We pay well for a reason. You signed up with good intentions. And then you wanted to get to know me. No human has ever wanted to know me. I’ve definitely never been asked to a hockey game before.”

He smiles, but Zhenya feels suddenly embarrassed by it, like his intentions are being laid bare, even though he hadn’t really _had_ specific intentions when he’d extended the invitation. “If you like hockey so much, you should go to game,” he demurs, feeling awkward and obvious. “Surprise you’re not go with demon friends before.”

“Oh,” Sid says. He averts his eyes and takes his own sip of wine. “Well, most demons don’t really care about human… I don’t know, activities. Interests. They think I’m weird for being so into it.”

Zhenya has to scoff at that. “Their loss if they’re not like hockey.”

Sid smiles faintly. “Yeah.”

“Or good food,” Zhenya adds, and Sid flashes him a grateful look.

“So, I guess what I’m getting at,” Sid says, “is that I don’t think you have to apologize. You’re not one of the creeps. And I think — I think we’ve gotten to know each other now, right? And now that I’ve gotten to know you —” he pins Zhenya with his eyes again “— I think I really like you.”

It takes a minute for Zhenya to truly absorb his words, and when they land, his _oh_ is very different this time.

Sid nods. “And… I think it might be fun to finish what we started, don’t you?”

Zhenya draws a sharp breath — he’s not sure if he’s more surprised, elated, or nervous that he’s somehow going to fuck it all up. “I’m think about all the time,” he admits, and even that’s probably an understatement. “But Sid, I’m — I’m not just want sex. Like you said. Not just in that for sex, not just in this for sex. Shouldn’t we… go on date maybe first?”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Sid asks with a frown. “Isn’t that what this is?”

How Zhenya manages to not fall out of the booth in shock, he’ll never be sure. “I — maybe? I’m not sure if they are, or… or how demons… date? If you date? It’s not like we’re ever talk about.”

“Well, let’s talk about it now,” Sid suggests, some playfulness creeping into his tone. “And let’s call them dates. So technically, we’ve been on four already. And I believe the usual human rule to wait for three dates, isn’t it?”

Zhenya spies their waiter approaching with their food, and he grins at Sid. “Let’s eat fast.”

*

In the end, they each eat about half their food before Sid signals their waiter and asks for boxes and their check. They walk quickly back to Zhenya’s car, bumping shoulders and elbows along the way. Zhenya wants to kiss him right there, up against the side of it, but there are too many people around, and he wants their first _real_ kiss to be something special. For the same reason, he doesn’t do it inside the car either, even though Sid looks like he’s expecting it. Finally, when they get through the door of Zhenya’s apartment, it’s _Sid_ who shoves him into the wall and — after dropping their bags of leftovers on the floor — hooks a hand around the back of Zhenya’s neck and pulls him down into a sweet, deep, urgent kiss. Zhenya locks his arms around Sid’s waist, trying to curl his fingers into the material of Sid’s jacket, and kisses him right back. It’s just as good as he remembered. Better, because it means something this time.

Sid breaks away much sooner than Zhenya would like, eluding Zhenya’s attempts to chase his lips. “Put the food away,” he instructs. “I want to finish it later.”

Zhenya laughs but obeys, all but throwing the takeout boxes into the fridge. When he comes back out of the kitchen, he’s shocked to find Sid petting an enthusiastically purring Dixi. He’s taken off his coat and laid it over the arm of Zhenya’s sofa, and Dixi is sitting on it and looking rapturously up at Sid while he scratches the space between her ears. “What the fuck?” Zhenya asks before he can stop himself. “She’s always scared of other people.”

“Cats and demons get along very well, don’t we, kitty?” Sid explains, addressing the words to Dixi even though he’s speaking in his usual tone. “You have to stay out here though, for a little while.”

“Or long while,” Zhenya adds, and Sid laughs.

In Zhenya’s bedroom, with the door safely shut, they kiss and kiss, making quick, fumbling work of each other’s clothes. Zhenya walks Sid back towards the bed as Sid struggles with Zhenya’s fly, and Zhenya only nudges him away when they reach the mattress. Sid drops to sit on the edge of it, and he strips out of his pants while Zhenya tries to watch and stumbles over his own. He’s never seen Sid any way other than fully dressed, and he’s a sight to behold — wide well-muscled shoulders, a strong solid torso, thighs like tree trunks, and between them, a huge hard cock, flushed red and just slightly curved: perfect.

“Quit looking and come touch,” Sid says, and Zhenya gets stuck with his jeans still hanging onto one ankle and almost winds up on the floor.

As soon as he can, he pushes Sid back onto the bed and crawls on top of him, sealing their lips together and pressing against all of Sid’s slightly-too-warm, naked skin. Zhenya squirms around and reaches between their bodies to line up their cocks, not because he wants to get off that way, but because he wants to feel them together. Then, he settles in and kisses Sid for as long as he can make himself wait for more, dragging his mouth from Sid’s to give attention to his neck and ears and clavicle. Sid seems into it in a way he hadn’t been before: he pants and pets and encourages, running his hands over Zhenya’s back and teasing his fingers down lightly into the crack of Zhenya’s ass.

Zhenya hisses in response and lifts his head to murmur into Sid’s ear, “What you want? Fuck me? Or something else? I can suck you. Anyone ever do for you?”

Sid groans in response. “Not very often.”

“You want?” Zhenya asks again, dragging his teeth lightly over Sid’s earlobe.

“Yeah, okay,” Sidney agrees, his breath hitching, and Zhenya pulls back to kneel over him. He looks down at Sid all spread out on his mattress, his pale skin mottled with flush all the way down his chest, his mussed dark hair, the slick echoes of Zhenya’s mouth, his cock beading precome. “What?” Sid huffs.

“How do you look?” Zhenya asks, because apparently even his horniness isn't enough to get in the way of his overzealous curiosity. “When you’re demon? This is just for human, right?”

Sid’s face goes skeptical. “You really want to have that conversation now?”

“Want to know you,” Zhenya says. “Real you.”

That softens Sid’s expression, but he shakes his head against the pillow even as one corner of his mouth curls up. “I — I want that too. But you might not like it.”

Zhenya doesn’t think that’s possible, not now that he knows Sid. He’ll like him no matter what he looks like. Maybe he’ll have to be in human form for them to fuck, but that’s okay. Zhenya pets his hands down Sid’s thighs and asks, “Is it really different?”

Sid sighs, and it feels like the first step to relenting. “Not as different as you’re imagining. Or the paintings you’ve probably seen.”

Well, now Zhenya _has_ to know. “Should show me. I want to see.”

“Really? Now?”

“Right now,” Zhenya orders, and he pinches one of Sid’s thighs, making him jump.

“Hey!” he protests, giving Zhenya a gentle kick that’s more of a nudge. Then he grows more serious and warns, “You’re not gonna want to fuck after.”

Zhenya rolls his eyes. “Let _me_ decide. Oh wait —” he makes an exaggerated thoughtful face, tapping his chin for effect “— I’m already decide. I still want.”

“You don’t know that,” Sid argues, but he sounds less strident now. He’s wavering, the same way he does when he wants to order more food at a restaurant but feels weird about it.

Zhenya has decided that he shouldn’t feel weird about this either. He pets Sid’s skin, soothing now instead of irritating. “Sid,” he says, as earnestly as he can, meeting and holding Sid’s eyes, “I know.”

For one more moment, Sid looks conflicted, and then just like that — he’s different.

Zhenya gives an involuntary jerk of surprise when it happens, and Sid immediately says, “I _told_ you, I —”

“Sid, hush,” Zheyna interrupts. “I’m just surprise, that’s all. It’s happen so fast.” He snaps his fingers to illustrate, and although it doesn’t exactly seem to mollify Sid, at least he goes quiet.

Mostly, Zhenya _had_ been startled. Sid had changed from human to demon form in the space between one blink and the next, the same way he appeared in and disappeared from Zhenya’s room, the way he vanishes things and then pulls them out of thin air. In truth, Sid’s appearance hadn’t even changed drastically — his general size and musculature is about the same — but there are a lot of small changes, some of which are, Zhenya has to admit, unnerving at first glance.

As it turns out, Sid doesn’t have hooves or a tail, but he does have horns. They curve up from his temples, about four or five inches in length, dark and gleaming like polished black ivory. Under Zhenya’s hands, his skin firmer and even warmer than it had been before. His cock is gone, leaving in its place a vulva that looks no different than a human’s, though perhaps slightly larger in scale. The most arresting change, though, is to his eyes: they’re larger and rounder and the irises are huge, glowing golden and nearly obscuring the whites. The pupils are no longer round, but slitted vertically, like a cat’s. Zhenya loves cats, but while he finds Dixi’s eyes comforting, the same eyes on Sid border on disturbing. Zhenya tries not to show it, forcing himself to hold Sid’s gaze firmly.

He must do something to give himself away though, or Sid just senses his unease, because he squirms under Zhenya’s scrutiny. “You hate it. I can —”

“ _Sid_ ,” Zhenya scolds, trying to pinch again. It’s harder now, and his fingers slide without finding the purchase he wants. He settles for patting instead. “I’m just look, see what’s different. Everything’s okay.”

“Well,” Sid says uncomfortably, “that’s not all there is.” He gives Zhenya an exaggerated fake smile and — oh, he has fangs. And, Zhenya sees when he licks his upper lip, a subtle fork at the end of his tongue. _That_ certainly doesn’t seem like it’s all bad; Zhenya can certainly think of a few applications for it, anyway.

Zhenya quirks one eyebrow. “Still okay.”

“And there’s —” Sid gestures vaguely at the space between his legs.

“Because it’s not cock?” Zhenya asks, his brow wrinkling. “You know I like this too.”

Sid shakes his head. “It’s not… that exactly. But you haven’t really gotten in there yet.”

Zhenya can’t help himself from offering Sid a wicked smirk in response. “Can I get in?” He reaches out carefully, telegraphing the move, and when Sid doesn’t stop him, he runs the pad of one thumb up the slit of his opening. “Because you’re wrong, from before. I still want to fuck.”

Either the touch or the words make Sid suck in a sharp breath, and when he lets it out, he sighs, “If you really want to.”

“I _really_ want,” Zhenya promises, and when he meets Sid’s eyes again, it’s a lot easier to hold his gaze.

Sid smiles at him, and Zhenya leans down to meet it, until he’s spread out over Sid’s body again. He kisses Sid carefully, mindful of his fangs, licking his way in with gentle strokes of his tongue. “I can get rid of them if you want,” Sid mumbles, but Zhenya objects.

“No,” he says. “Don’t want you to worry at all. Just be you.”

Finally, _finally_ , the last bit of tension seems to melt out of Sid’s body, and he grabs Zhenya’s head to pull him down for a hungrier kiss. The fork at the tip of his tongue rubs against Zhenya’s, and his nails feel sharp on Zhenya’s scalp.

Zhenya lets it go on for a few moments, then he moves away. Sid tries to follow him, but Zhenya weaves one hand into the back of his hair and tugs him down to the pillow. He presses his open mouth to Sid’s neck, dragging it along the heated flesh he finds there. Sid relaxes into it, tilting his head to stretch his throat for Zhenya’s attentions. His skin feels thick and smooth, but it’s not unpleasant. Zhenya takes his time there, then at Sid’s collarbones, then his nipples, which prove delightfully sensitive. Because they’re drawn up into peaks, they have the added bonus of letting Zhenya get some purchase with his teeth. Sid gasps when he does, clamping a leg over Zhenya’s hips and rocking up against him. Zhenya can feel that he’s slicker between his legs now.

That’s enough to stoke the fire burning in Zhenya’s belly, and he breaks away from what he’s doing to kiss and lick his way down Sid’s body. Sid makes a small distressed-sounding whimper, which is almost enough to make Zhenya reconsider, but there’ll be other opportunities to see how far he can push the nipple thing. As he reaches the juncture of Sid’s thighs, he slows, lapping his way gently all the way to Sid’s perineum, then back up in one long drag of his tongue, using more pressure to dip just slightly in between Sid’s folds. He can feel that Sid is wet inside, and he tastes a little different than any human Zhenya’s ever done this for — tangy, spicy, but not exactly bad.

Satisfied, Zhenya goes to work.

He’s always liked eating people out, probably more so than sucking cock, so Sid not having one in his demon form doesn’t bother Zhenya much at all. He’s too keyed up to use a lot of finesse, so instead he uses a lot of enthusiasm while still making an effort to vary up his techniques, from wet passes with the flat of his tongue to stiffening the tip of it and pressing into Sid’s slit. Sid threads his hand into the back of Zhenya’s hair and rocks against his face, moaning.

Zhenya still manages to adjust his position enough to cup one hand under his chin and start working his fingers into Sid’s body, the slide slick and easy. He moves his tongue to Sid’s clit, lightly flicking and circling, then sucking when Sid doesn’t object. “Thought you said it’s weird in here,” he mumbles, probing gently around to see if Sid’s sensitive spots are the same as a human’s. “Feels good to me.”

Sid squirms. “I… you haven’t seen it all yet.”

“No?”

He waits until Sid starts to talk again, then brushes over Sid’s clit and chuckles when Sid interrupts himself to gasp. Sid gives a little retaliatory yank on Zhenya’s hair and starts again. “Well, there’s more. I still have a cock.”

Zhenya pulls back to look, and can’t help but admire his handiwork. Sid’s skin here is flushed and wet, both with saliva and evidence of his own arousal, but there’s definitely no penis. “Where?”

“It’s inside.”

“In here?” Zhenya asks, sliding his fingers out, then back in, rubbing the tips against a spot that makes Sid tremble.

Sid catches Zhenya’s wrist and encourages him to retreat again. He makes a small noise, somewhere between a grunt and a whimper, then breathes out. “Okay, try again.”

Zhenya works his fingers back into Sid’s entrance and — yeah, there’s something there now. His fingers meet silky flesh before he can get them in much past the first knuckle, and he leans back to watch as Sid’s cock emerges from his body, bigger even than it had been when he was human, wet already with the slick from Sid’s own body.

“Shit,” Zhenya breathes.

“It’s weird, right?”

“It’s _hot_ ,” Zhenya corrects, and then he goes back to work with gusto, taking Sid as far as he can as fast as he can. He gags a little and his jaw hurts, but it’s worth it when Sid shouts and slams his hands down onto the mattress, digging his fingers into Zhenya’s sheets. It doesn’t take long for Zhenya to get Sid off that way, and when he comes down Zhenya’s throat, it tastes like — _don’t think barbecue sauce,_ Zhenya warns himself, _don’t think barbecue sauce_ —

Zhenya can’t help it. It tastes like barbecue sauce.

Sid comes for what feels like a long time, and when Zhenya is finally able to pull off, he flops down to one side of Sid’s body, panting and resting his sweaty temple against Sid’s tacky skin. He’s so hard it’s almost painful, but this is about Sid, not Zhenya, so he tries to breathe and wait and calm himself down. Sid’s hand lands on his scalp a moment later, and he brushes absently through Zhenya’s hair. “What about you?” Sid asks hoarsely. “I can see you.”

“Don’t worry about,” Zhenya grumbles.

“I’m not _worrying_ ,” Sid scoffs. “I want you to get off.”

“I can just…” Zhenya starts, making a tired jerking-off motion, but Sid speaks at the same time.

“Do you want to fuck me?” he asks.

Zhenya groans. The very idea of it makes his cock twitch, and he reaches down to squeeze the base of it. “Not sure I last.”

“I don’t care if you _last_ ,” Sid protests. “I want you to feel good.”

“I’m mean, not sure I can last to get inside. Already feel good.”

“ _Geno_ ,” Sid whines, and Zhenya tilts his head up, even though there’s no way he can see Sid’s face from this angle. “I want you to fuck me.”

That doesn’t feel like fair play, but Zhenya groans again and rolls up onto his knees, because he’s going to do his level best to give Sid whatever he wants. “Where I fuck?” he asks, looking down at Sid’s body. His cock is still out, and Zhenya’s pretty sure that means there’s no way for him to get in.

“My ass,” Sid says. As he speaks, he lifts his hips and shoves one of Zhenya’s pillows under them.

Zhenya lets out a piteous noise. “Takes too long.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Sid explains, and Zhenya’s cock jumps again in his hand as Sid dips his own fingers into his hole to demonstrate. “It gets itself ready.”

If Zhenya’s not the luckiest man on earth, he’s not sure who is. “No way.”

Sid grins smugly. “Sex demon.”

Zhenya starts to position himself between Sid’s legs, hefting one of Sid’s meaty thighs onto his elbow and lining his cock up with Sid’s hole, but he pauses before sliding in, gritting his teeth at how close he is to getting some relief. “We need condom?”

“Oh,” Sid says, like the concept is so foreign that he hadn’t even considered it. “No, not if we do it like this. I can’t get pregnant this way.”

It’s Zhenya’s turn for surprise, and he gapes down at Sid. “You can get _pregnant_?”

“Not like this,” Sid repeats, then he urges, “Come on.”

But Zhenya still resists. “But what about, like, sick? I’m not sleep with anyone for long time, but I’m not have test for long time either.”

“I can’t get anything from you. Trust me. There are too many biological differences.”

“But me? From you?”

“ _No_ ,” Sid says firmly. He spreads the leg that Zhenya isn’t holding out a little wider and reaches under his thigh to hold himself open. “Now do it, Geno.”

So Zhenya does. He takes two or three slower strokes, but he’d been too worked up and the squeeze of Sid’s body feels too good, so he braces himself firmly and fucks Sid _hard_ , and not for anywhere near as long as he wishes he could. Sid rocks up against him and encourages him with grunted _yeahs_ and _like thats_ and _right theres_ until Zhenya tips over into a straining, shuddering orgasm. When Zhenya pulls out, he’s shaky and spent, and he collapses down into the bedsheets again. He reaches out blindly for Sid, and Sid tucks Zhenya into his side. Zhenya sighs and lets his body go limp.

“Well,” Sid says. “Wow.”

Despite how exhausted Zhenya is, he finds the energy to preen. “You like?”

“Don’t be smug,” Sid chastises him. But then he adds, more seriously, but still with a hint of a smile in his voice, “Yeah, I liked it. I’m glad we decided to do it. You know, for fun.”

“You not save what I’m put here?” Zhenya teases, patting Sid’s abdomen. “Give to someone?”

Sid stiffens. “I would never. Not without you saying it’s okay.”

Zhenya regrets himself immediately. He should know better than to try and string anything worthwhile together when he’s this come-dumb. “I’m just make bad joke, Sid. I know.”

“Okay,” Sid says, and thankfully, some of the tension eases back out of his frame.

For a few moments, Zhenya basks in the silence, but he’s managed to bring a niggling thought to the forefront of his mind, one that’s reared its ugly head over and over again since this whole thing began. As much as he doesn’t want to ruin the moment any further, he can’t help but say, “I still think about, sometimes.”

“Think about what?”

“Person who’s pick me. For donation. You know, when this is all start.”

“Do you?” Sid asks. He starts running his hand lightly up and down Zhenya’s arm.

Zhenya nods against Sid’s chest. “I’m worry that maybe they’re angry or they’re sad. That they’re still wait for baby, and I’m why.”

Sid stops stroking him and gives him a little squeeze. “Well, you don’t have to anymore. We found them someone else. They’re expecting.”

“Really?” Zhenya dislodges Sid’s arm as he struggles to prop himself up so he can see Sid’s face. “They have baby?”

“Really,” Sid replies, grinning up at him. His horns and fangs are gone, but his eyes are still demonic. “Well, it’s not born yet. But they’re not waiting anymore, and they’re not sad.”

Zhenya feels relief wash over him. He’s been carrying his guilt around for months, and while he’s not sure it will ever be completely gone, he can feel the lion’s share of it melting away, bathwater down the drain. Looking at Sid’s smiling face, lighter than he’s felt in months, Zhenya’s only choice is to kiss him. Soundly.

He’s startled to be interrupted by a familiar _pop_ , only this one resonates more deeply, in Zhenya’s chest as well as his ears. Not for the first time, Zhenya pushes himself up and turns to find a demon in his room. This one is unfamiliar though, and it _looks_ like Zhenya would expect a demon to look, with huge, curving horns like a goat’s, glowing yellow eyes, and shaggy fur covering its hands and the sides of its face. “Shit!” he exclaims, and scrambles to fling himself off of Sid’s body.

Sid seems far less concerned. He courteously tugs the sheets up over himself, but his voice is casual when he says, “Hey, Lamia. What’s up?”

Astonishingly, the demon raises a hand in greeting and grins, bearing jagged fangs. “Hi, Sidney. Good to see you. So, this is what you’ve been doing with all your time away.”

With a long-suffering groan, Sid says, “Oh, don’t start with me.”

“Sid,” Zhenya hisses. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure,” Sid says, glancing at Zhenya over his shoulder. “But this is Lamia. She’s one of my section supervisors. Geno, meet Lamia; Lamia, Geno.”

The demon turns her grin on Zhenya as she gives him what can only be described as a cheeky wave. “ _So_ nice to meet you.”

“What do you want, Lamia?” Sid asks, turning back to face her. “Or are you just here to give me shit?”

“No, that’s just a perk,” she replies with a wink, then she reaches into the air to produce a file folder. “I reviewed the forms for your requested leave of absence, and they look good, but you forgot to sign them. I can’t approve your leave without your signature.”

Sid sits up and reaches for the papers. “You’re kidding.”

Lamia shakes her head. “I’m not,” she says, before giving him another wicked grin. “You must have had other things on your mind.”

“She’s got a sense of humor,” Sid comments to Zhenya. He snatches a pen into existence, flips open the folder, and signs the last page with a flourish. He holds it back out for Lamia to take. “There, all set.”

“All set,” Lamia agrees, grabbing the folder, then vanishing it. “I’ll approve your request as soon as I’m back in the office.”

“Great,” Sid says, his tone very much indicating that he’s ready to bring the conversation to a close. “Thanks so much.”

“You’re welcome,” Lamia replies. “Have fun!”

And then she vanishes with another low, resounding _pop_.

Zhenya stares at the air, into the place where she had been, and mutters, “What the fuck.”

Sid rolls over to face him. “I probably owe you an explanation for that, huh.”

“Would be nice,” Zhenya says, trying to convince his heart to slow back down. “She looks different, not like you.”

“Technically, _I_ don’t look like _her_ ,” Sid corrects him. “The horns, right? She’s a couple hundred years older than I am, so hers are bigger, of course. I don't really like that style either, so I keep mine shorter. Or is this going to be some kind of commentary about how I can’t grow fur? Because believe me, I’ve heard it a thousand times before —”

Zhenya reaches up and silences Sid with a finger to his lips. “Sshh. I’m not care about fur. Why is she here though? You’re… go on vacation?”

Sid glances away from Zhenya, looking abashed. “I was going to tell you, if everything went well tonight. I don’t think it’s fair for you if we’re trying to — I don’t know, start a relationship, or whatever. Figure out if we _should_ start a relationship. While I’m doing what I do for work. I know things are different for humans — how you might think about sex compared to how I think about it. So I applied to take a leave of absence while we give it a try. And if it seems like it’s going to work out, then we can decide what to do.”

By the time he’s done talking, he’s back to looking at Zhenya with his cat eyes, somehow still so earnest even in this form, and there’s so much emotion welling up inside of Zhenya that he struggles to find words. “Oh.”

“Is that — is that okay?” Sid asks timidly. “Otherwise I’ll just use the time to, you know, move on from this whole —”

“Shhh,” Zhenya says, cutting Sid off again. “Is okay.” He feels a wide smile creeping over his face. “Is _very_ okay. How long is leave?”

“As long as we need,” Sid replies. “I just have to check in at least once a month.”

“Really?”

Sid grins. “I _told_ you we have good benefits,” he says, and then he rolls over on top of Zhenya and kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> Вы говори́те по-ру́сски? = Do you speak Russian?  
> Беда не приходит одна = Misfortune never comes alone. (Equivalent expression to “when it rains, it pours.”)
> 
> (Or at least that’s what Google tells me! Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
> 
> I also just wanted to point out that I named Sid’s supervisor Lamia based on [this myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia). In this case, Lamia’s origin story is the same, but in this demons-are-kinder-than-you-think-verse, she decided to work for Infernalis, where she could make sure that other people were able to fulfill their dreams of parenthood. (I have so many random pieces of trivia about this fic if anyone is curious!)
> 
> Thank you for reading and happy Halloween!!


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